"The documents likely relate to ordinances that will go on the ballot," said Peterson, the First Amendment Foundation president. Organize Now then filed suit asking a court to make the unredacted records available and to prevent the mayor's office from deleting any records. "The Mayor has said she would share any and all information related to the Dropbox, yet what little she's provided so far is rife with deletions and redactions," Porta said. The records also suggested that others were logging-in to the Dropbox with the same username and password, further obscuring the identity of those who have had access. The names of those device owners and their IP addresses were redacted, despite there being no statutory justification for doing so. The records also showed that, one day after Organize Now's open records request was filed, the mayor's office deleted 18 devices (like computers and Ipads) that had access to the Dropbox. It was the first time in two years that any records had been deleted from the Dropbox, Porta says, yet the county claimed the deletions were part of "routine maintenance." Those records showed that the mayor's office deleted multiple records just one day after the NBC affiliate, WESH 2, reported on the mayor's use of the file sharing system. After the comptroller and state attorney declined to investigate the matter, Organize Now teamed up with the First Amendment Foundation and filed a new request asking for, among other things, the dropbox activity logs, deleted item logs, and names of all individuals who have access to the dropbox. The group received a tip that the mayor's office was using Dropbox to communicate and advising staff not to mention it in texts and emails. "Laws don't come out of nowhere," Porta told the Center for Media and Democracy, yet in response to Organize Now's records request, the county claimed to have almost no memos, emails, texts, or other documents showing how the measures were developed. Another would change certain elected offices to nonpartisan positions and move their elections to August rather than November which - for the same reason that Ferguson, Missouri's local government is so unrepresentative - would lead to lower turnout and likely benefit Republicans in the largely Democratic county, Porta says. Organize Now's lawsuit arose after the mayor's office claimed to have almost no records pertaining to three major ballot measures the county was pushing, including one that would specifically prohibit citizen efforts to enact paid sick days or minimum wage increases - measures that Organize Now successfully promoted last year.
We believe this lawsuit will have statewide implications for how governments utilize this new technology." Mayor Alleged to Be Hiding Records Relating to Paid Sick Days "Instead, technologies such as Dropbox are being used to shield and obstruct access to basic government information.
"Advances in technology should make access to public records easier and cheaper," said First Amendment Foundation president Barbara Peterson. The increasing use of technology like Dropbox pose new issues for open government. Organize Now's Executive Director Stephanie Porta suspects that Mayor Jacobs not only deleted public records, but also may have given non-county employees - like lobbyists - access to files that were kept hidden from the public. Organize Now, with assistance from the Florida First Amendment Foundation, filed a lawsuit last month against Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs, alleging her office has used the cloud-based file sharing service Dropbox to undermine the Sunshine State's sunshine laws. A tactic used by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to evade state public records laws has popped up in Florida, prompting a lawsuit against the Orange County mayor for allegedly using an internet dropbox to dodge transparency surrounding the county's latest effort to thwart paid sick day legislation.